‘And still you go on?  I would dash my head against the wall and die.’

‘When will you learn,’ he said with a strange tone in his voice, which, though no one had been listening to us, made a sudden silence for a moment, it was so strange; it moved me like that glimmer of the blue sky in my dream, and roused all the sufferers round with an expectation—­though I know not what.  The cries stopped; the hands beat no longer.  I think all the miserable crowd were still, and turned to where he lay.  ‘When will you learn—­that you have died, and can die no more?’

There was a shout of fury all around me.  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ the crowd burst forth; and I think they rushed upon him and killed him, for I heard no more until the hubbub began again more wild than ever, with furious hands beating, beating against the locked door.

After a while I began to feel my strength come back.  I raised my head.  I sat up.  I began to see the faces of those around me, and the groups into which they gathered; the noise was no longer so insupportable,—­my racked nerves were regaining health.  It was with a mixture of pleasure and despair that I became conscious of this.  I had been through many deaths; but I did not die, perhaps could not, as that man had said.  I looked about for him, to see if he had contradicted his own theory.  But he was not dead.  He was lying close to me, covered with wounds; but he opened his eyes, and something like a smile came upon his lips.  A smile,—­I had heard laughter, and seen ridicule and derision, but this I had not seen.  I could not bear it.  To seize him and shake the little remaining life out of him was my impulse; but neither did I obey that.  Again he reminded me of my dream—­was it a dream?—­of the opening in the clouds.  From that moment I tried to shelter him, and as I grew stronger and stronger and pushed my way to the door, I dragged him along with me.  How long the struggle was I cannot tell, or how often I was balked, or how many darted through before me when the door was opened.  But I did not let him go; and at last, for now I was as strong as before,—­stronger than most about me,—­I got out into the air and brought him with me.  Into the air! it was an atmosphere so still and motionless that there was no feeling of life in it, as I have said; but the change seemed to me happiness for the moment.  It was freedom.  The noise of the struggle was over; the horrible sights were left behind.  My spirit sprang up as if I had been born into new life.  It had the same effect, I suppose, upon my companion, though he was much weaker than I, for he rose to his feet at once with almost a leap of eagerness, and turned instantaneously towards the other side of the city.

‘Not that way,’ I said; ‘come with me and rest.’

‘No rest—­no rest—­my rest is to go on;’ and then he turned towards me and smiled and said, ’Thanks’—­looking into my face.  What a word to hear!  I had not heard it since—­A rush of strange and sweet and dreadful thoughts came into my mind.  I shrank and trembled, and let go his arm, which I had been holding; but when I left that hold I seemed to fall back into depths of blank pain and longing.  I put out my hand again and caught him.  ‘I will go,’ I said, ‘where you go.’